Life gyān from war games ⭐
Table of Contents
- 1. No free lunch.
- 2. Not all alliances are the same.
- 3. Important to choose the “right front” to attack an enemy on.
- 4. Patience depends on growth in power differential.
- 5. Victory belongs to those who seize pivotal opportunities.
- 6. Often the goal of war is not to win something but to minimize anticipated losses.
- 7. People would rather 1v1 their weak neighbor for scraps of land than team up against the big scary crown, who for some reason they won’t attack until the last second when it’s too late.
I’ve been playing a little WAR game lately, and here is some WAR gyān I have learned:
1. No free lunch.
In a game where hundreds of intelligent agents are grinding to maximize their goals, there are no 10-dollar bills lying on the ground. Everything instrumentally useful to all agents gets gobbled up immediately. Which means that really simple strategies (the equivalent of doing “technical analysis” in finance) will never work.
2. Not all alliances are the same.
If you are allied up to defend against a much stronger player, then you want the best for each other — your fates are tied for the forseeable future. If you are allied up to conquer and divide up a weak or equal-strength player between yourselves, you’ll want to sabotage your ally a bit, because your alliance is really more like a de-escalation (promising not to sabotage too much).
In particular this is one reason it’s important to understand the size of your enemy. If you are up against a huge enemy, you better not be doing useless infighting with your allies.
3. Important to choose the “right front” to attack an enemy on.
Better to attack on fronts that are (1) softer targets (2) more valuable (3) closer/more in the Overton window (4) if they are attacking you on that front and defending it is valuable to you. Even if your goal is to completely conquer the enemy, it will be easier to destroy the harder targets once your strength differential has increased.
4. Patience depends on growth in power differential.
Best to attack an enemy when your power ratio is at its peak; until then, bide your time and build up your strength. Indeed you may observe that historically most “imperialism” happened when a power or a power ratio was peaking: the Macedonian empire, the Roman empire, Indian colonization of the Silk Road, European colonization.
Conversely you will get attacked when you are a growing power — best to not get baited too much, and play defensive.
5. Victory belongs to those who seize pivotal opportunities.
Corollary of Pt 1, no free lunch so if you don’t seize the opportunity someone else will. Be prepared to kill people when they’re at at their lowest.
6. Often the goal of war is not to win something but to minimize anticipated losses.
What you think is a 4D chess masterstroke might really just be something to reduce inevitable losses that you don’t understand but the govt does. Modi’s foreign trips in 2014 were like this.